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  1. hfaley

    Response: Branding in the Digital Age and Social Media Strategies

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    I found David C. Edelman’s “Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places” a really thought-provoking piece. The analysis of how consumers go about making purchases on the internet is never something I had really considered, but reading his findings made a lot of sense to me, especially as someone who makes a lot of purchases on the internet. For me, customer reviews are really important when I make a purchase, and it’s also rare that I actually go to the website of the manufacturer, where I’m less likely to find reviews of their product that aren’t from websites that get paid to endorse their products. It was funny to me to read how developer teams were so surprised by the uselessness of some of their “tried-and-true” marketing techniques, like ads on websites. For me, the more I see an ad from a company invade my computer screen, the less likely I am to buy something from them just out of pure annoyance. What I think we can take from this article is just how important online retailers have become, especially in terms of their space for user dialogue and feedback, and their ability to advertise a multitude of products in one place. This definitely means rethinking the business strategies of a lot of companies who are used to traditional advertising models.

    I found Soumitra Dutta’s piece “What’s Your Social Media Strategy?” to be a lot less enlightening. It didn’t offer any new information, and I feel like it was a guide that would be more useful to fiftysomething corporate executives that have never used anything but AOL Mail. What I found most interesting is that Dutta felt the need to even write this piece - I suppose that, given it’s from the Harvard Business Review, the audience is what I suggested it would be - but I think that today in 2012, social media’s explosion offers a more critical analysis of its usefulness, not just a cut-and-dry pamphlet on if you should use LinkedIn or not.

  2. hfaley

    Daily Create: List 20 uses for a banana.

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    1. Banana bread
    2. Banana muffins
    3. Banana pie
    4. Banana tarts?
    5. Banana smoothie
    6. STRAWBERRY BANANA smoothie (love that)
    7. Bananagrams
    8. Lure rabid monkeys
    9. Demonstrate safe sex!
    10. Make inappropriate jokes
    11. Make your enemies slip on banana peels
    12. Compost
    13. More banana muffins 
    14. Breakfast on the go!
    15. Baby food?
    16. Pretend microphone, if you can’t find your hairbrush
    17. Pretend hairbrush, if you can’t find your microphone
    18. Perfect accompaniment to your monkey costume at Halloween
    19. Give it to kids on Halloween to ruin their nights
    20. NUTRITION!

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    [Image source]

  3. hfaley

    Michigan Radio Website Review

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    I read news online daily, but I’ve never considered looking at Michigan Radio, even though I grew up listening to it. Local news isn’t often on my radar, due to general disinterest. 

    The past few days I’ve been perusing MR’s website and facebook and I must say I’m pretty impressed for a group that I wouldn’t imagine to have a massive fanbase. I really liked their Facebook interactions, funnily enough, but as for their website in general, I found it to be generally easy to use, if not a little crowded and overwhelming at times. Their “news” section dropdown menu had so many choices (what’s the difference between law, politics, and government?) and it was a little hard to quickly find what I was looking for just because I was unfamiliar with their indices. Having their general news section just be an endless scrolling list of stories was a little overwhelming. Organizing it a bit more like NPR’s front page, in block format, might be a little easier to read.

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  4. hfaley

    XML vs. HTML: A lesson learned very early on for me when I was a…

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    XML vs. HTML: A lesson learned very early on for me when I was a young Internet troll just beginning to learn HTML to customize my Neopets profile page. 

    Michael Wesch’s video “The Machine is Us/ing Us” described the disconnect between content and format when it comes to HTML (which I used to make my 1999 Neopets background a picture of Sailor Moon) and XML (which any sane web designer who wants to share their content uses to make all of their stuff format-free). The creation of XML also allowed commonfolk, or a large sector of internet users who aren’t familiar with HTML, CSS, or the like, to create content without having to buy HTML For Dummies like eight-year-old me.

    One of the coolest parts of Wesch’s video was how he described how XML allows websites to “mash” content together, like allowing Flickr to map people’s photos and further integrate user-generated material.

    What I found interesting was the “teaching the machine” idea, and then Wesch’s transition: “The machine is using us… the machine is us.” As someone who has been part of the internet community for a long time, beginning with Neopets chat rooms and continuing on to YouTube friendships and internet-enabled communities, this really struck home for me. Wesch’s discussion of what we need to rethink is exactly right, and I think really ties into his video’s title. “We” own the internet… but can “we” control it? Or is it controlling us?

  5. hfaley

    Response: RiP!: A Remix Manifesto

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    I really enjoyed watching RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, because I feel like it’s not often to hear a refreshing point of view on open source legality and copyright law in the age of the internet. Even before seeing this documentary, I have had a longstanding issue with current copyright laws and how easily they are abused by moneymakers and people in positions of power. 

    Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers offered a similar commentary on the role of the internet in the existing legal frameworks of copyright in one of his videos (which, ironically, has now been taken down by YouTube). In the sense that RiP mentions Brazil’s current industry of remixing music, I find that the internet in general has offered a platform for widespread creativity that wasn’t possible before. 

    I understand the value of copyright in its barest form: allowing someone who creates something to have a legal say over it. But the way that copyright exists now, wherein George Lucas has copyrighted the Star Wars franchise for the next 100 years, is simply unfeasible. Hank discussed in his video that, had Lucas not been able to manipulate copyright laws that would outlive him, but instead allowed his franchise to become free public property a few years ago, it would have given people the legal opportunity to take that franchise and make their own changes to it. We could have seen an Episode I of Star Wars that didn’t have Jar-Jar Binks and wasn’t about trade regulation. We could have actually had a good movie. 

    (On a side note, Hank’s recent video on the ownership of ideas is totally worth watching. DFTBA, everyone.)

  6. hfaley

    “Who cares – this stupid -? We all – it doesn’t – who gets – president of -. Do you – think…”

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    “Who cares - this stupid -? We all - it doesn’t - who gets - president of -. Do you - think it’s - to change - around here? - one single - smarter? or -? The only - it does - to is - one that - elected. The - pathetic charade - every year - everyone makes - same pathetic - just so - can put - on their - to get - college. So - for me, - I don’t - want to - to college - I don’t -. As president, - won’t do -. The only - I will - is that, - elected, I will - dismantle the - government so - none of - has to - through one - these stupid - again. Or - vote for -. Who cares? - vote at -!”

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    Tammy Metzler’s monologue from the movie Election. Every third word omitted re: Daily Create challenge. [Original quote here.]

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